News of the Week (April 9th, 2017)

Gun Rights

Montana House Passes Bill to Help Create a Gun Rights Sanctuary State
Today, the Montana House passed a bill that would take big steps towards making the state a sanctuary for gun rights by prohibiting state enforcement of most federal acts restricting firearms, magazines or ammunition. If signed into law, it would effectively stop any such federal acts in practice within the state.

Professor Michael Mann destroys the case for action on climate change
The House Science committee heard from three climate scientists. The testimony of the activist, Michael Mann, destroyed the case for strong public policy action to fight climate change. He deserves attention. Sadly, the attention has been on the least important parts of his testimony.

SCIENCE VS. DOGMA ON CLIMATE
It is increasingly clear that the battle over global warming consists of science on one side, and politically-motivated dogma on the other. Ken Haapala of the Science and Environmental Policy Project offers historical context

Shale Transforms the Global Gas Market
Or perhaps more accurately, American shale gas is helping to create a global gas market. For years, natural gas needed pipelines to make its way from seller to buyer, and owing to that, most natural gas contracts were long-term and often linked to the price of oil.

An Engineer’s Explanation of Climate Change
In this essay I will attempt to describe an explanation of climate change that may likely pertain to many (most all) time-scales. But before I do, I would like to make some comments about ice-core analysis – salient and significant observations that nonetheless get little to no attention for some very strange reason.

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

CA Bill Proposes Free Health Care for All, but Has No Funding Plan
Nearly every human culture has a folk tale — or more than one — about an unending source of wealth. Sometimes it’s spinning straw into gold; sometimes it’s a goose that lays golden eggs or that gives golden feathers; sometimes it’s a magic hand-mill that will grind out your heart’s desire; sometimes it’s a magic purse that’s always full no matter how much you spend.

Attackers Fire Grenades at Police in South Thailand; 6 Hurt
Gunmen with grenade launchers and other heavy weapons attacked a police checkpoint early Monday in southern Thailand, injuring six officers, in what appeared to be the latest violence by Muslim separatists who have been fighting for more than a decade.

Stopping the Unstoppable: How will the U.S. Defeat Missiles of the Future?
Earlier this year, former U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert asserted that current ballistic missile defense technology would “reac[h] the asymptote of our limits” within “about ten years.” This fact stands in stark contrast to another cold reality: the offensive ballistic missile capabilities of U.S. adversaries only appear to be accelerating. Despite critics’ calls to shy away from investing in ballistic missile defense (BMD) to address this threat, the U.S. must continue to vigorously research and develop revolutionary BMD technologies. Otherwise, it risks allowing the balance of offensive and defensive ballistic missile capabilities to grow increasingly asymmetric as defensive technological progress becomes asymptotic.

President Trump, King Abdullah, and the Syrian refugees
Jordan’s King Abdullah has been at the White House meeting with President Trump. Today Trump and Abdullah did a joint press conference in the Rose Garden. News coverage has focused mainly on Trump’s outraged response to Assad’s chemical gas attack in Syria, and whether it will lead to military action by the U.S. That could develop into a major story, particularly after U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley confronted Russian officials at today’s Security Council meeting.

Report: Russian warship in Mediterranean headed towards U.S. destroyers that attacked Syria
Could just be an overhyped coincidence but Putin has been known to engage in petty provocations of U.S. ships since Trump took office. He may feel he has no choice but to rattle his saber after last night. By attacking, Trump defied Russia’s umbrella of protection over Assad. If Putin doesn’t respond somehow, even if it’s nothing more than making a show of parking a Russian ship near the two American destroyers, he risks looking weak in his first big test of wills with Trump.

THE MESSAGE IN THE MISSILES
Last night President Trump authorized the destruction of the air base from which the Syrian butcher Assad had launched insidious sarin gas attacks earlier this week. Our destruction of the air base was executed through the use of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Top Obama Adviser Sought Names of Trump Associates in Intel
White House lawyers last month discovered that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

NASA Just Unveiled Plans for Its Moon-Orbiting Spaceport: Deep Space Gateway
NASA’s goal of getting humanity to Mars has been developing for years, but while the space agency has been busily building and testing its most powerful rocket – the Space Launch System (SLS) – it’s fair to say we haven’t heard a lot of specifics about how and when it would transport astronauts to the Red Planet.

Men Confess to “Toxic” Sins of Manhood at University Confessional Booth
Adding to the proof that the left is basically a fundamentalist cult, the University of Regina has unironically set up a confessional booth so that men can confess to the sin of being … well … men. Masked as an initiative to combat sexual harassment, the university’s Man Up Against Violence program is a function of identity politics designed to emasculate men. The first step in that emasculation is requiring men to seek forgiveness for the sin of being a man.

“Equality”: Now Female Students Get Suspended Over Scant Allegations
Coastal Carolina University has suspended its cheerleading program amid allegations that the cheerleaders were involved in a prostitution ring. There have been no prosecutions, and there don’t appear to be any on the horizon, so controversy surrounds the school’s actions.

Were CA Republican State Senate Offices Infiltrated Watergate-Style?
California State Senators Janet Nguyen and Andy Vidak and staff members arrived to work at their Capitol offices one morning last week to find unlocked office doors, a pungent chemical smell, and discovered their carpets had been cleaned without prior notice or even authorization. What’s the big deal? Were the offices infiltrated Watergate-style?

Seventh Circuit holds that Title VII forbids anti-gay job discrimination
In a major decision breaking with every other federal appeals court to rule on the issue, the en banc Seventh Circuit held today that sexual orientation discrimination is a form of sex discrimination forbidden by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The vote was 8-3. The opinion in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College, by Judge Diane Wood, reasoned that sexual orientation discrimination is essentially indistinguishable from sex discrimination because the former relies on stereotyped concepts about how men and women should behave sexually and about with whom they should associate in their intimate lives.

Uh-Oh. CNN Is Facing A Class-Action Discrimination Lawsuit Of Its Own
CNN and several of its affiliates could be following in its competitor, Fox News’s, fate as it faces a class-action discrimination lawsuit. While Fox News’ trouble stems from sexual harassment, CNN is facing charges of race discrimination from more than 175 former and current employees.

Obama Spied on Trump in 2011
As the investigation into the Trump wiretapping scandal continues, sources within the Trump Administration now confirm that surveillance activities were conducted on Donald Trump in 2011, during the time he was considering announcing a run for president.

Republican Leads in First Montana Congressional Poll
While a lot of focus has been on Georgia’s 6th district, there are three other Republican-held seats with special elections: South Carolina’s 5th, Kanas’ 4th, and the at-large district in Montana. In that last one, last year’s Republican Gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte faces off against Democrat and Montana musician Rob Quest to fill the seat vacated by now-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Women’s March Takes Aim At Three Dems Who Voted To Confirm Gorsuch
The Women’s March is none too pleased that President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed on Friday morning in a (slightly) bipartisan vote of 54-45. They’ve decided that they’ll be “coming for” Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) because they voted for Gorsuch.

Grasshoppers and oysters are on the menu at Safeco Field this season
For the past seven years, at the start of baseball season, Seattle media are invited to Safeco Field to try the new menu items curated by Seattle Chef Ethan Stowell. And this year was no different. Chef Stowell says it’s the first year they’ve invited a bunch of local restaurants to serve food at the stadium.

Liberals will rue Becerra’s prosecution of Planned Parenthood video producers
Becerra late last month filed 15 felony counts against Center for Medical Progress founder David Daleiden and his collaborator (or, in the parlance of the current indictment, co-conspirator) Sandra Merritt for making secret recordings of meetings with National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood executives in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere around the state.

Angry mob shuts down Blue Lives Matter speech at Claremont McKenna College
A throng of angry protesters converged at Claremont McKenna College on Thursday and effectively shut down a pro-police speech as they surrounded the building, forcing the speaker to give the talk via livestream to a near-empty room as they yelled “F*ck the police” and “Black Lives Matter” and banged on windows.

Behind the showdown on Mount Gorsuch
Writing slightly in advance of the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court this past Friday, I referred to the weak sisters among the GOP Senators who came through in the event. I also paid tribute to Senator McConnell’s “long game” in keeping Justice Scalia’s seat open and in overcoming the Democratic filibuster. The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes now gives us an early look behind the showdown in “How Mitch McConnell won the battle to confirm Judge Gorsuch.”

The EU Casts Stones From Its Glass House
Well, this is rich. The European Union is chastising the United States after Donald Trump’s “energy independence” executive order signed earlier this week, saying that it’s now up to the EU and China to take the lead on curbing global emissions.

Extinct creature sightings are piling up in Australia
Multiple reports of Tasmanian Tiger sightings are starting to flow in from everyday citizens in Australia. Several people have recently claimed they’ve spotted the animal, which isn’t a tiger at all — and, despite looking very much like a species of dog, isn’t of canine lineage either – but a carnivorous marsupial. Spotting an interesting creature in Australia isn’t exactly a rare occurrence, but there’s one problem with these reports in particular: the Tasmanian Tiger is supposed to be extinct.

Europe’s Out-of-Control Censorship
If Facebook insists on the rules of censorship, it should at the very least administer those rules in a fair way. Facebook, however, does not even pretend that it administers its censorship in any way that approximates fairness.

Opinion

How to Lose a Majority
The very public intra-party fight between President Trump and the Freedom Caucus is just the latest twist in the ongoing fight over the philosophical, strategic and ideological direction of the Republican party. As has been his mode of operation since his candidate days, Trump has taken to Twitter to shame/intimidate/cajole members of his own party.

Are these rules somewhat like the Nuremberg race laws updated?
Reality check: The Loyola asshat farmers do not currently have much power off campus. Give them time. Give their graduates time to morph into angry little talent-free and unemployed asshats, looking to be hired by progressive governments, to fix people. Then see what happens.

What is the “Alt” Left?
Much has been written about the “Alt[alternative]-Right” It is attacked as a sort of updated paleo-conservatism—or anti-orthodox conservatism that promotes white identity, often dressed up with hip culture to appeal to younger right-wingers.

GOP infighting turns ominous for Trump and the GOP agenda
The political disaster that was the non-repeal of Obamacare last month was bad enough. But now its recriminatory aftershocks, fully joined by President Trump himself, augur ill for the future of the Republican agenda this year – and maybe beyond.

To End “Racism,” Let Someone Else Raise Your Baby
If you posit that “racism” (however defined by the Left) is the worst of all possible sins, then it follows that anything that can be done to eliminate the human tendency to flock together must be done. So get with the program, you cis-normal nazis

Americans No Longer Believe in the “Consent of the Governed”
Way back at the founding era, Americans took seriously the idea of the “consent of the governed.” As Greg Weiner noted recently, and as I’ve discussed elsewhere, this consent is exercised collectively, either in aggregating individuals’ votes or through voter representatives. But Americans at the Founding took seriously the idea that their consent could be conferred by their representatives. This belief has changed in the intervening couple of hundred years. On both left and right, Americans now talk about taxes being forced on them to pay for things for which they disapprove, even though their respective legislatures adopted the taxes. I doubt many Americans today seriously believe that they’ve consented to most of the laws and taxes that their legislatures adopt. What changed?

Democracy Dies in the Administrative State
In the age of Trump, the so-called “mainstream media” has once again been possessed of its manic Republican administration energy levels, determined to shine the light on government corruption and malfeasance stemming from the administration.

H. R. McMaster Engineers The Most Complete Victory Since Battle Of Midway
One of the initial foot-shots of the Trump administration, and for a short while I thought they had a runaway gun with a perpetual ammo supply, was the reordering to the National Security Council. There were two key components to the change from the way the Obama NSC was structured. Trump returned to the Bush-era rule of relegating the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence to an “as needed” role rather than them having a perpetual seat at the table by being members of the “principals committee.” This would probably have caused some excitement by itself but it was another feature of the reorganization that got everyone exercised. Steve Bannon was made a part of the principals committee. The atmospherics of tossing the JCS chairman and DNI off the prinicipals committee and elevating his “political strategist” to their position, especially in the context of everything else going on, was horrible.

Democrats: The Party of Hate
Two propositions: First, despite what you year from the left, Democrats are the true party of hate. Second, one way of confirming this is to take in the fact that the voice of reason on this point is . . . Bernie Sanders!

How the Friend Zone is destroying America
Forget Islamic terror, an economic collapse or a rogue meteor strike. The real threat to the future stability of the United States is our falling birth rate, or at least that’s the somewhat tongue-in-cheek theory put forward by Hans Fiene at The Federalist earlier this week. All talk of “demographic tsunamis” aside, this is absolutely a matter of concern going forward and Hans has identified what he feels is the biggest weakness in the American baby-making ecosystem. There are simply too many guys being put in the friend zone by women.

Forfeiture of property should be tied to a conviction
A couple of weeks ago we editorially bemoaned the fact that no one had introduced a bill in the state Legislature to restrict the practice of law enforcement agencies seizing private property — homes, cars, cash and such — under the presumption it is the product of criminal activity, but without ever having to actually go through the due process of convicting someone of a crime — a process called civil asset forfeiture.